License Activation

1. How do we activate our licenses?

   

2. Why is license activation required?

   Activation of license keys is standard practice in the software industry. We try to focus exclusively on implementing customer requests but occasionally we have to spend time on licensing especially as Secret Server goes into new geographical markets.

3. Is there a grace period before we have to activate?

   Existing customers have 30 days to activate their licenses after upgrading. New licenses have to be activated immediately on adding them to Secret Server. Evaluation licenses do not require activation.

4. What will happen if we don’t activate our licenses?

   Secret Server will go into Limited Mode if you don’t activate your licenses. Limited Mode allows you to view passwords but many other features are disabled such as creating Secrets, editing Secrets, changing permissions and using web services. Simply activate your licenses to get out of Limited Mode.

5. We have several license keys. Do we need to activate each license key individually?

   No, the license activation process will activate all license keys that are currently added to your Secret Server.

6. What if we have been using our license keys on more than one instance of Secret Server?

   Secret Server software licenses (user licenses, Professional or Enterprise edition licenses) may only be used on a single production instance of Secret Server. You may use your same licenses for a single testing (non-production) environment. If you have used your licenses on multiple production instances of Secret Server, please contact us.

7. What information is collected and sent during license activation?

   License Activation is required for each web server that will be running Secret Server. The request and the response to/from thycotic.com are encrypted for added security.
   
   The following information is sent to thycotic.com when you activate:

   • Name (user entered)
   • Phone Number (user entered)
   • Email (user entered)
   • All Licenses (license name, license key)
   • Hardware Hash of each web server
     
     • This information is one way hashed so it does not reveal any identifiable hardware information.
   • Secret Server Version
   • An Encrypted Value to identify the instance
     • This does not include any Secret data or the encryption.config file.
   The data is gathered for the purpose of contact if there is a licensing issue and Thycotic will not sell or distribute the information provided during activation.  The only information available to Thycotic staff is the contact information solely for the purposes of technical support and customer service.

8. Our Secret Server does not have outbound access to the thycotic.com web site. Can activation be done while offline?

   Yes, there is an offline option for activating licenses. (See the Demo movie above for the offline process - also note the offline=true option described below if you have trouble activating offline)

   To activate your Secret Server licenses when your server does not have internet access, perform the following steps:
   
   1. Navigate to the Administration -> Licenses page
   2. Click the License Activation button
   3. Enter your name, email, and phone number in the fields
   4. Click the Activate Offline button on your Secret Server site
   5. Copy the License Request from the first text area onto the clipboard in step 1
   6. Click the link called 'Activation Center' in step 2 (this will take you to the Thycotic web site)
   7. Paste the License Request into the text area on Thycotic.com
   8. Click the Activate button on the Thycotic site
   9. Copy the response and return to Secret Server
   10. Paste the response in the text area next to step 3
   11. Click the Activate button next to step 4
   Your activation is complete.  If you received an error message, please take note of the error code and call the phone number contained in the message.
   

9. What happens if we find that we had more named users than licenses after activation? Will the account lock us out?

   The user licenses are per named individual, and after the allowed number of users have logged in, subsequent users who attempt to login will not have access.

10. If we have trouble activating our licenses, what should we do?

    a) Please watch the demo at the top of this page to review how the process is supposed to work.

    b) If your Secret Server is currently supported, i.e., there is a current support license for each user license, our technical support team will be able to help you. Please contact us.

11. My Server is a VM that moves to different hardware often.  Will this cause me to need to reactivate over and over?

    As of version 7.8.000000, you will not need to reactivate over and over. When you activate, you will be able to use Secret Server for a year without needing to reactivate regardless VM hardware changes. However, if your machine name changes as well as your hardware, you will need to reactivate. If you are using a version older than 7.8.000000, you will need to reactivate when the VM moves.

Article ID: 146, Created On: 3/3/2011, Modified: 12/15/2011